Rick Cohen, who
is serving as the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s interim chief executive
officer, has clarified the anticipated length of his employment and revealed
that his salary is expected to be set at $195,000 per year.

LACBA announced
his appointment on May 19 and said that he would start work on May 22 and
“serve through 2018.” Cohen told members of the Senior Lawyers Section
Executive Committee Thursday night that he will actually be at the post for 12
months.

“My contract has
not yet been signed, therefore I don’t know that my salary is finalized. However,
I’m happy to tell you what I’ve agreed to accept is $195,000 a year.”

He told the
committee:

“In accepting
this position, money was not the object.”

Cohen said he
had been able to go into retirement—following 10 years as president and CEO of
the Buchalter firm and a stint as interim CEO of the California State Teachers’
Retirement System—“because I’m not in the position of having to earn great sums
of money anymore.”

He continued:

“I’m comfortable
with that salary and I hope the organization is comfortable with it, too. I
don’t think that I should not be paid because I think it is important that
people be compensated for their professional efforts.”

He said he won’t
be paid for the period from July 15 to Aug. 15 when he and his wife will be in
New York, pursuant to plans they had previously made, to celebrate his 65th
birthday.

“I will work,
but I will not be paid” during that period, he disclosed, adding:

“I will come
back on my own dime, once or twice…to see staff.”

That would
render his pay for the 11 months to be $178,750.

Suchil’s Salary

Cohen noted that
he will be drawing a “significantly smaller sum” than his predecessor. However,
considerable controversy surrounded the amount of Sally Suchil’s pay which
burgeoned from $197,851 in 2010 to $374,261 in 2013.

She left office
Jan. 13, receiving $350,289 in severance pay. Her salary at the time of her
departure has not been disclosed.

LACBA on May 23
declined to state what Cohen’s salary would be. A spokesperson told the
MetNews:

“We respectfully
decline to provide his salary because divulging his personnel information would
be against LACBA’s interests in the very near future when it attempts to search
for and negotiate with candidates for a longer-term CEO. Pursuant to statutory
reporting requirements, LACBA will disclose the 2017 compensation of its key
management on the IRS Tax Form 990 in November 2018. If LACBA determines that
it will not jeopardize its interests to disclose Rick Cohen’s salary prior to
this date, it will do so.”

Cohen said at the
meeting Thursday that he would “suspect” the reluctance to state his salary was
because his “contract has not been finalized.”

LACBA did not
note in its May 19 announcement of the appointment that it was subject not only
to contractual details being worked out, but also to approval by the Board of
Trustees. That ratification has not yet occurred.

Section Email
Lists

Cohen was
questioned by Nowland Hong, outgoing Senior Lawyers chair, as to how he views LACBA’s
refusal to provide sections leaders with the email addresses of the section
members. The temporary CEO said that if he were the “omnipotent overlord” of
LACBA, he would say: “The email lists will be there tomorrow.”

However, it is
necessary for him to consult with others as to the reasons the lists have been
withheld, he advised.

He added,
however:

“I believe
transparency is very, very important.”

Past President
Harry L. Hathaway made note that LACBA has been losing about $1 million a year,
partly because of gifts to the Counsel for Justice, the charitable arm of the
association.

Cohen said it
didn’t take him long “to realize we have financial issues” and said he is
“aware that CFJ enjoys LACBA subsidies.” He remarked that there might be a
better way for LACBA to discharge its goal of serving the public, stated in its
articles of incorporation as one of its purposes, than through CFJ.

Makes Promise

The new bar
executive pledged:

“A year from
now, when you look at LACBA’s business model, it will be no less than
break-even.”

He said he hopes
the group will be making a profit, adding that he is “fairly certain you will
not have to worry about the demise of this organization on my watch” or because
of anything he would do.

Cohen admitted
he has not been a member of LACBA since 1997, explaining that he was then
“working around the clock” and “didn’t have the time to do LACBA.” He said that
he comes to the organization as “as close to a tabula raza [blank slate] as you
can get.”

In the short
time he has been at LACBA, he said, he has grasped that there is an acute
problem of dwindling membership, and that recruiting new members will be his
first priority.

He told those at
the meeting that he is not “the best guy you could have hired,” but assured
them:

“I’m a pretty
good find.”

At the Beach

Cohen said he
been spending a good deal of time at the beach. If he were to go there now and
people were to ask what he does for a living, he said he would anticipate a ho-hum
reaction to his saying he is the CEO of the county bar.

He declared that
after he leaves his year-long post at LACBA and goes “back to the beach,” he
would hope for a different response. Cohen remarked:

“[When] they
say, ‘What did you do?’ and I say, ‘I was CEO for a year of the Los Angeles
County Bar Association,’ I want them to say, ‘Oh! You must be really
something!’ ”

Cohen said that
drawing that sort of reaction is his “personal mission.”

Participating in
the meeting were four former LACBA presidents, who are members of the executive
committee. They are, in addition to Hathaway, who is a former chair and
co-founder of the section: incoming chair Charles Michaels, immediate past
chair John Carson, and (by telephone) past chair and section co-founder
Patricia Phillips.